Bob Cooney takes a deep dive with Paul Raphaël, co-founder of Félix & Paul Studios, about building Interstellar Arc — a permanent large-scale free-roam VR experience in Las Vegas — and what it took to get there from the studio’s early days filming immersive content on the International Space Station.

The conversation covers the practical realities of running location-based VR as a business: why explaining these experiences to the public remains one of the industry’s hardest problems, how footprint standards and headset choices shape what operators can build, and why Félix & Paul eventually moved Interstellar Arc from a touring model to a permanent installation.

Raphaël also gets into the physical design details that make or break presence in large-scale VR: railings, haptics, wind effects; and why the guest experience has to be designed long before anyone puts on a headset.

Topics covered:

• How Félix & Paul got started in immersive media, and the jump from early experiments to filming on the ISS with NASA and SpaceX
• The business model behind large-scale LBVR, and the fragmentation still holding the ecosystem back
• Why communicating immersive experiences to a mainstream audience is still so difficult
• Footprint standards, distribution challenges, and why Félix & Paul chose Quest for location-based deployment
• Why location-based VR gets a stronger emotional response than home VR
• Storytelling challenges unique to large-scale VR, and how Interstellar Arc handles presence and story density
• The hard lessons from building Interstellar Arc in Vegas, and why it became a permanent installation instead of a touring show
• Why the railing matters, and how wind and haptics add physical immersion
• Designing the pre-show experience – and what happens after guests take the headset off

Visit Felix and Paul studio listing -> https://thevrcollective.com/studio/felix-and-paul/